Background of the Problem

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Problem

Generally, the purpose of teaching language at school is to develop the students’ language skill. There are four skills of language to be mastered in learning English. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. One of the skills that very important to be developed is reading skill. Reading should be mastered well by the students because reading is essential factor that influence one’s activity in communication. People consider reading as an important activity, so people usually say that reading is the window of the world. By reading, people can get the information widely without going anywhere. Based on the researcher’s pre-observation at the first year students in SMAN 1 Punggur, it was found that almost 70 students of SMAN 1 Punggur had low ability in reading. It was proved by the statement of Umi Latifah, English teacher of SMAN 1 Punggur. She said that generally, the students had difficulty in comprehending an English reading text. The students have difficulty in finding the main idea of passage with long sentences, specific information, inference, reference and vocabulary of the reading text. It can be seen from their reading comprehension test scores which were mostly stated lower than the minimal mastery criterion KKM of that school which requires the students getting 72. The cause of the problem comes from students’ reading style and also students’ reading skill. First, the students have the same style in reading activity. They prefer to read alone with consideration that they feel convenient and can concentrate better. They do not try to discuss the text and it makes them face their own difficulties. Second, the students’ reading skill, there are some causes such as the limited vocabularies, sentence construction within paragraph, difficulties in finding the main idea, supporting details, reference and inference of the text. It was also find out that, the cause of the problem might be from the teacher. The teacher’s way of teaching reading affects the student’s reading comprehension. Speaking too fast, unclear explanation and monotonous technique used by the teacher discourage students to learn reading. After asking to the some students, it was found that the teacher still uses conventional technique in almost everyday teaching and learning process. She just asks the students to read certain text in the book or students’ exercise book, and then the teacher asks them to do the task following the text. The monotonous process of learning make the students discourage to learn. In this case, the researcher focuses on how to create situation where the students can engage in reading process. As far as it is known that the students feel bored and failed to understand the text fully because their teacher asks them to read the text loudly, then they should answer or discuss a number of comprehension questions following the text. To overcome the problems above, the researcher assumes that there should be some suitable techniques in teaching reading in order to motivate the students to read all text so they can get the information fully. For this, the teacher should be able to apply a certain technique to increase students’ reading comprehension and to make them enjoy in teaching learning process. Based on the statement above, the researcher applied cooperative learning in teaching reading comprehension. Cooperative learning is one of learning strategies which is considered applicable and useful in increasing students’ reading comprehension and make the students active during the learning process. Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively. Unlike individual learning, cooperative learning capitalizes on one another’s resources and skills asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc..Furthermore, the teacher’s role changes from giving information to facilitating students learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. One of the cooperative learning’s technique supposed to be useful in teaching reading is jigsaw technique Aronson, 1978. Jigsaw gives all students the opportunity to increase their reading comprehension because this technique is not only encourages students on learning the groups tasks and activities but also helps them in building a social personality among them. By using jigsaw technique, the researcher hopes that it can motivate the students in reading because it may be an interesting activity in which the students have to read the text. The text is divided into sections, and one section is for each student to take care of. The students who are responsible from the same section get together and form a new group in which the goal is for the students to master the section of the material and to enable them to teach the other members in their original learning group. By having the responsibility, the students may be motivated to read the text. It is assumed that if the students have been already motivated in reading activity, they may like reading and may enjoy the reading activity. Therefore, if the students enjoy reading activity, it may be easy for them to comprehend the text. In addition, Dedi Indra Kusuma 2007 has done a research to compare between Jigsaw technique and SQ3R technique in increasing students’ reading comprehension achievement at SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung. He found that the students’ scores within experimental class which used Jigsaw increased significantly from 50.35 to 85.50 point while the increasing of students’ scores within control class were only from 47.76 to 65.68 point. He fully convinces that jigsaw technique carries benefits toward students’ reading comprehension achievement. Seeing the results Dedi Indra Kusuma’s study, the researcher intended to investigate the implementation of jigsaw technique in increasing students’ reading comprehension achievement of news item text at SMAN 1 Punggur. Senior High School students read various types of texts in their daily lives. The types of text that Senior High School students find as reading include monologue essay and functional texts. The monologue essay e.g. recount, report, discussion, explanation, exposition analitycal, exposition hortatory, news item, anecdote, narrative, procedure, description, and review texts and functional texts e.g. advertisement, brochure, schedule, message, notice, personal letters, invitation Depdiknas,2006. The researcher used news item text, because it is taught in the first grade of senior high school and most of students feel hard to comprehend this type of text compared to the other texts while this text is very useful to inform the reader, listener or the day which are considered news worthy or important. Considering the problem above, the researcher proposed cooperative learning and its certain technique by conducting a research entitled “Increasing students’ reading comprehension achievement of news item text through jigsaw technique at the first year students of SMAN 1 Punggur”.

1.2 Identification of the Problems